Baked Rice with Mushrooms, Peppers, Turkey Bacon & Cheese

When bloggers stretch their brain upside-down-inside-out trying to write a witty and entertaining opening paragraphs, I wonder if you wanna say "just cut the (not-so-funny) crap and get on with the (not-so-good) food" sometimes?
We all probably do.

Let me cut my crap and get on with the food.

In Hong Kong, we see baked rice dishes all the time, the most famous one being pork chop baked rice, from fast food places like Cafe de Coral, Fairwood, Maxim's, or local Hong Kong cafes. It's deep fried juicy (albeit tenderized) pork chops, placed on a bed of fried rice with "tomato" based MSG laden sauce, topped with cheese and baked until the cheese melted and charred. Generally, freaking delicious.

I never thought of trying to recreate the dish at home. You know we don't deep frying stuff and since there's a Cafe de Coral/Fairwood/Maxim's at almost every corner, where these babies are sold for around HK$ 30something a pop, totally delicious and no effort required apart from ordering & queueing to pick up, why bother? That was my stand....

...until I saw Noobcook's Baked Rice posts, and realised that I can do other versions of baked rice, eliminating the deep frying and all the other complicated stuff, making it perfectly suitable for me, the lazy bummie. I did mine slightly differently from Wiffy's, I started with leftover cooked rice instead of uncooked rice. Try both methods, or be inspired, discover your own way and share :)

This is how I did mine.
Ingredients
(serves 2)
- 1 cup of leftover cooked rice (mine is mixed of white and brown rice), refrigerated overnight
- 1 green bell pepper, 1 yellow bell pepper (you can use any color), remove seeds, diced
- 1 cup sliced fresh shitake mushrooms (or any other mushrooms)
- 4 sheets of turkey bacon (you can use other bacon/sausages/SPAM/etc), cut into small pieces
- 1 cup grated cheese (I used mozzarella and parmesan, you can use other cheeses)
- olive oil, salt, black pepper, worchestershire sauce, dry herb mix (oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme - optional)

Heat up fry pan with a bit of olive oil (the turkey bacon doesn't release much oil. If your bacon releases a lot of oil, omit the olive oil), add bacon until they get browned a bit (do not burn/overcrisp the bacon pieces)...

...add diced peppers and cook until they soften, add sliced mushrooms, cook for a bit until it reaches the desired doneness that you like (I like mine super done and a bit charred).

Add leftover rice, season with salt, pepper, a dash of worchestershire sauce, dry herb mix, and mix well.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Transfer the rice mix (You can sooo already eat this, but don't. At least not all) into an oven proof dish..

...top with grated cheeses...

A little or a lot... depending on how good you wanna look in that pair of skinny jeans...

For me, a lot. (I don't wear jeans, I wear giant skirts and dresses all the time :p)
I also added a dash of dry herbs...hmmm perfumetastic!


Dump it into oven and wait for the magic to happen....15 minutes later...


MAGIC.

OK, that's an exaggeration.
It's no magic, it's easy cooking.

PS. my all burnt and scratched baking sheet is so photogenic, I think I should do another one :p